My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.